Analysing the effectiveness of renewable energy supporting policies in the European Union

With several mid-term policies in place to support the development of renewables, the European Union (EU) seems on its way to increasing the share of renewable energy to the targeted 12% by the year 2010. It is however, yet unclear how effective these policies are, which technologies will see the largest growth and which countries will indeed be able to meet their targets. This article discusses a monitoring protocol that was developed to monitor this effectiveness and judge whether targets will be met. In a step-wise approach policy instruments are characterised and analysed, leading to a quantitative assessment of the likely growth in renewable energy production for each individual technology and country in case no policy changes occur. Applying this monitoring protocol at the EU-Ievel we show that with the current policies in place renewable energy production will reach a share of 8-10% in 2010, and the share of electricity production will reach a level of 15-18% of total electricity consumption, whereas the target is 22.5%. Additional policies are clearly needed to achieve the ambitious targets set. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.